It is a well known fact that cars be parked adjacent to each other in parking lots or parking garages invariably receive dents from doors of cars next to each other when they are irresponsibly opened. While most parking spaces are marked, many drivers do not make an effort to park parallel within the marked lines. This results in many car doors being too close to each other. When such doors are opened, they are apt to dent and ding the adjacent door.
John McElroy, Automotive Journalist, moderator, and host of “Autoline Detroit”, a nationally syndicated program airing on the “Speed Channel”, recently addressed the issue of the lack of body side mouldings. The journalist stated that many of the automobile manufacturers have elected to eliminate body side mouldings. While this step was great for automotive design, giving a car a clean and pleasing look, it didn't do anything to prevent dings and dents from appearing on doors and side panels of cars.
Car manufacturers have shown they are well aware of these problems by permanently installing mouldings on the full width of the door and often at the widest profile of the door exhibiting the most outer surface. However, most cross sectional profiles of car doors are not the same due to different makes of cars. As a result, the edges of the doors hardly ever match the profile of the adjacent cars, again resulting in damages.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,879,037 is an example of a typical product for preventing damage to adjacent car doors. In this disclosure, a pad is used that consists of a semi-rigid foam material with a flexible urethane lining sealing the interior. The flexible urethane lining is used to seal attracting magnets within the backside. While this may work very well, the protecting pad may be stolen when attached. The magnets may have a detrimental effect on the paint of the door, especially, if the paint is of a metallic nature causing the molecules in the paint to be rearranged and thus marring the appearance of the paint. In recent years, many car manufacturers have used fiberglass material on roofs and doors of cars. In this case, the magnets would be ineffective. Also, magnets over a period of time lose their magnetic attraction. The inventive design of the present invention will alleviate all the above noted problems.